Category Archives: Business

IPOs (or why the absence of a pop is not a fizzle)

The big business story of the day is Facebook’s IPO, which is being described in the press as “modest,” a “whimper,” “fall[ing] short,” “sputter[ing],” “underwhelming,” and “a ho-hummer,” to pick a few choice terms. As even most of these articles … Continue reading

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“Polled” on Net Neutrality

I just participated in a phone poll from some outfit (Western Wats) calling with caller ID saying 801-823-2023. Occasionally, I’ll do these things out of curiosity about what they’re asking, but this one really offended me by how blatantly the … Continue reading

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The Irrationality of Flexible Spending Accounts

Ezra Klein has a good post up today on the problems of giving employers, but not individuals, a tax exemption on health insurance. This is clearly central to the problems of healthcare financing in the US, but, given how things … Continue reading

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Off-balance-sheet entities? Really?

Over my vacation, I read Kurt Eichenwald’s Conspiracy of Fools, which is a wonderfully entertaining, novelistic narrative of Enron’s history and collapse. More on that in future posts, but having just finished that book, I choked when I read this … Continue reading

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How to Deliver Information

“Tell me what you know, then tell me what you don’t know, and only then can you tell me what you think. Always keep those three separated.” – Colin Powell to Mike McConnell, summer 1990, as reported in Lawrence Wright, … Continue reading

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Coulda, woulda, shoulda … but not really

First of all, congrats over to the team at Mint.com for going live and winning the Techcrunch40 prize. As a die hard Quicken user, I think it’s great that companies are pushing in this space. I can’t say I save … Continue reading

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Work is what we do

I read today’s NY Times article on Silicon Valley millionaires who don’t feel rich with a mix of amusement and annoyance. With a few exceptions, it doesn’t feel like the Silicon Valley I know — perhaps it’s just that, when … Continue reading

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Book of the Day: Perfectly Legal (David Cay Johnston)

Appropriately for tax season, I recently finished reading David Cay Johnston’s Perfectly Legal. The book describes the current state of the U.S. tax system; the description is of a no-longer progressive, mostly flat system which systematically offers loopholes to the … Continue reading

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How to Blow Five Years of Good Customer Experience in One Easy Step

About five years ago, I bought life insurance for the first time. We’d bought our house in the previous year and our son was about to be born, so it seemed like a prudent thing to do. I shopped around … Continue reading

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